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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
On February 21 2025 01:35 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
This is a good clip from Illinois Gov Pritzker
Indeed.
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Looks like despite Trump trying to fire all the independent assessors/watchdogs that would call him out on his bullshit, Musk and DOGE still got caught inflating how much money they've been "saving" Americans: in the first month, it was $55B... I mean just $16.5B... I mean only $8.5B... yeah, okay, it's really $2B:
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/nx-s1-5302705/doge-overstates-savings-federal-contracts
And the $2B that was recently "saved" by slashing contracts/budgets/jobs isn't necessarily permanent; it might be spent at a later time anyway, or perhaps things end up being even more expensive reactively, whereas the $2B might have been proactively cheaper. Needless to say, there's zero reason to believe anything that Trump/Musk/DOGE/Fox/Republicans claim as a victory during Trump's presidency, unless it can actually be corroborated by other, non-partisan, third-party sources.
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United States42785 Posts
On February 21 2025 05:42 Billyboy wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2025 22:01 Jockmcplop wrote:The Guardian has an interesting article about left wing activists and their relationship to the rest of the political spectrum. The article and study are about UK activists, but I'm fairly sure it applies in the US too. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/feb/19/leftwing-activists-less-likely-work-political-rivals-other-uk-groups-studyLeftwing activists in Britain are less likely to work with their political opponents than other groups and more likely to think those holding different views have been misled, a study has found.
The study by the polling group More in Common finds that 8-10% of the population, whom they classify under the heading “progressive activists”, hold strikingly different views on a range of issues than the rest of Britain.
The research also shows the group is more likely to dislike and criticise those that disagree with them than other voting blocs, a trait the report’s authors argue has contributed to the repeated failure of progressive campaigns and the rise of the global far right.
Luke Tryl, an executive director at More in Common and co-author of the study, said: “Progressive activists are the backbone of many of the UK’s campaigning organisations and have often been the drivers of social change in the UK. However, their political outlook and approach to bringing about change makes them outliers from much of the wider public and those they are trying to win over. It does alot of stating the obvious, but also applies heavily to half the conversations that occur in this thread. Thanks for posting this, it got lost in the flood but it is great information. I feel like the message is going to be ignored, maybe partly because people like the uniqueness of being part of the special few. The moralizing and purity tests are also bad for brining more to the tent. The right has shown massive success with humor and telling people they are OK and correct. I also agree with you and others on the Racism and Nazi stuff. No one believes themselves to be racist, so when you call them that, they just think you are being insulting and they then think the others called racists are not that bad. There is also a significant group of the "MAGA" or whatever you want to call this populist movement across the world that know basically nothing about history and politics. Many believe that Nazi's were communists because they believe Left means more government control and right means less.
Lol. You’re a few years behind the curve here buddy. You’re still at the “sure, there’s a lot of dog whistles going on but we can’t extrapolate anything from that” stage.
Reality has kept moving. Lots of people, including those in government, literally do believe themselves to be racist. They always did too but they’re no longer afraid to say it.
For example senior DOGE employee Marko Elez, one of just two who was given unrestricted access to the Treasury, who stated publicly You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity
…
Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool.
In that instance Elon decided that he’d forgive him for it and JD Vance argued that Marko, who is 25, was too young for it to be fair to hold him accountable for his words.
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United States42785 Posts
Or there's this guy.
https://www.texasobserver.org/ice-prosecutor-dallas-white-supremacist-x-account/
James “Jim” Joseph Rodden, a 44-year-old who works as an assistant chief counsel for ICE in the Dallas area. Rodden represents the agency in immigration court hearings where judges decide whether an individual is removed from the country.
Here's what he posts on twitter.
America is a White nation, founded by Whites. … Our country should favor us
All blacks are foreign to my people, dumb fuck
I’m not a commie, I’m a fascist. Fascists solve communist problems. Get your insults right, retard
Nobody is proposing feeding migrants into tree shredders, yet. Give it a few more weeks at this level of invasion, and that will be the moderate position
The idea that nobody really identifies as racist, everyone has biases but everyone in their own mind believes themselves to be a reasonable and open minded person, is a liberal delusion that they've told themselves to excuse inaction when faced with the open return of Nazism. These people know exactly what they are, and they're in government.
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On February 21 2025 00:24 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2025 23:57 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 20 2025 23:36 Liquid`Drone wrote:On February 20 2025 23:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 20 2025 23:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Call out the blatantly obvious ones but ignore the ones where the plausible deniability is strong. Call out patterns, ignore singular offenses. For Elon Musk it's becoming easier and easier every passing day to call him a nazi and harder and harder to deny it. I'm noticing it with my students - many have stated - looking at the nazi-greeting, that this was just an awkward autist gesturing. These students are overwhelmingly not nazis.
However presenting them with context of other tweets and the totality of musk's dogwhistling, they're like, oh, that's fucked up. It's kinda in line with 'call out the racism that is unquestionably racist, but avoid describing people who are a bit insensitive or ignorant as racist'- thought that I've also been a proponent of. Finding exactly where the balance is is tough of course but my experience is that even among trump supporters, racists and nazis are considered bad people.
So - don't entirely abandon terms and phrases like nazi, fascist and racist, but be careful not to hyperbole - that really pushes people away - and while pushing away the actual nazis isn't something I have much of an issue with, there are tons of people that can get behind some of the dog whistly language without believing in the actual ideology. Does anyone besides white supremacists and the people that "coincidentally" support them get/deserve this sort of political coddling? I mean, sure? I think right wingers describing social democratic policies as communist is counter productive for their cause, too, and that if you saw this happen from moderate right wingers towards moderate left wingers, it'd be likely to push them away more than it'd convince them to join them. + Show Spoiler +Similarly from left to right - if I'm arguing with a voter of the Norwegian conservative party and they're like hey, we need to reduce sick pay to make people less likely to stay home from work when they're not actually sick, then I do a piss-poor job convincing them if I start off by describing their preferred solution as an ayn randian hellscape.
Like picture these scales
communist -------social democrat -------centrist --------conservative/economically liberal------- ayn rand
I think people that are placed on various degrees of this axis can easily end up moving from one of these descriptions to the other. Centrists are potential social democrats and also potential conservatives/economically liberal, social democrats are potential communists but also potential centrists, the conservative/economically liberal can be swayed towards ayn rand or towards centrism - but not towards communism. I further think that if the conserative/economically liberal are conversing with the social democrats and they say 'you guys are communists', the social democrats will be less likely to move towards centrism from that interaction.
not racist ----------------------------- racist
While I don't have fitting terms to describe the potential positions on this scale, I can imagine a similar mechanic unfolding. Say there are 5 points of the not racist to racist scale (like above) - while a 1 (least racist) is less racist than a 3, describing the 3 as a racist does not move the 3 towards the 2 (where he can potentially be swayed), but rather towards the 4. Trying to reach the 5 is a hopeless endeavor, but if you're a 1, you'd rather have more 3s than 4s and you can predict that even if the 3 is guilty of some racist thoughts and actions, he could still be considerably more racist, and he himself will not consider himself racist (the racists are the 4s and 5s, obviously).
not nazi --------------------------- nazi
Same applies here - except while for racism you can argue that tons of people find themselves somewhere between 2 and 4, I think with nazism the gray area is significantly smaller, there aren't really any 'well I'm fine with genodicing half a million jews but 5-6 million is too many'-people. Except in the US we saw Trump and Republicans do the opposite. Put simply, they incessantly called basically anyone to the left of Liz Cheney a communist and won the popular vote. Trump didn't go from polling behind Carly Fiorina at 1% to being King president by coddling centrist Clinton supporters. I think this is a good point, and potentially points to hypocrisy. The logic of "don't label Republicans as Nazis/fascists/sexists/racists, even if they are those things (or close to it), because voters are apathetic/antipathetic towards name-calling" immediately falls apart when you realize that Republicans have done just as much name calling (and to a far less accurate extent, as far as those labels go) to anyone in the center or on the "left". The only way it wouldn't be hypocritical, I guess, would be if name-calling (accurate or not) only resonates with conservatives for some political reason, whereas name-calling (even if it's completely accurate) turns off liberals for some political reason.
To me, the likely explanation is that people in the US are conditioned to be more appalled by the thought of aligning with communists/socialists than with fascists. In significant part, because the US has spent basically the entire time since WWII bipartisanly attacking communists/socialists and coddling white supremacists/fascists.
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Norway28674 Posts
On February 20 2025 23:57 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2025 23:36 Liquid`Drone wrote:On February 20 2025 23:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 20 2025 23:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Call out the blatantly obvious ones but ignore the ones where the plausible deniability is strong. Call out patterns, ignore singular offenses. For Elon Musk it's becoming easier and easier every passing day to call him a nazi and harder and harder to deny it. I'm noticing it with my students - many have stated - looking at the nazi-greeting, that this was just an awkward autist gesturing. These students are overwhelmingly not nazis.
However presenting them with context of other tweets and the totality of musk's dogwhistling, they're like, oh, that's fucked up. It's kinda in line with 'call out the racism that is unquestionably racist, but avoid describing people who are a bit insensitive or ignorant as racist'- thought that I've also been a proponent of. Finding exactly where the balance is is tough of course but my experience is that even among trump supporters, racists and nazis are considered bad people.
So - don't entirely abandon terms and phrases like nazi, fascist and racist, but be careful not to hyperbole - that really pushes people away - and while pushing away the actual nazis isn't something I have much of an issue with, there are tons of people that can get behind some of the dog whistly language without believing in the actual ideology. Does anyone besides white supremacists and the people that "coincidentally" support them get/deserve this sort of political coddling? I mean, sure? I think right wingers describing social democratic policies as communist is counter productive for their cause, too, and that if you saw this happen from moderate right wingers towards moderate left wingers, it'd be likely to push them away more than it'd convince them to join them. + Show Spoiler +Similarly from left to right - if I'm arguing with a voter of the Norwegian conservative party and they're like hey, we need to reduce sick pay to make people less likely to stay home from work when they're not actually sick, then I do a piss-poor job convincing them if I start off by describing their preferred solution as an ayn randian hellscape.
Like picture these scales
communist -------social democrat -------centrist --------conservative/economically liberal------- ayn rand
I think people that are placed on various degrees of this axis can easily end up moving from one of these descriptions to the other. Centrists are potential social democrats and also potential conservatives/economically liberal, social democrats are potential communists but also potential centrists, the conservative/economically liberal can be swayed towards ayn rand or towards centrism - but not towards communism. I further think that if the conserative/economically liberal are conversing with the social democrats and they say 'you guys are communists', the social democrats will be less likely to move towards centrism from that interaction.
not racist ----------------------------- racist
While I don't have fitting terms to describe the potential positions on this scale, I can imagine a similar mechanic unfolding. Say there are 5 points of the not racist to racist scale (like above) - while a 1 (least racist) is less racist than a 3, describing the 3 as a racist does not move the 3 towards the 2 (where he can potentially be swayed), but rather towards the 4. Trying to reach the 5 is a hopeless endeavor, but if you're a 1, you'd rather have more 3s than 4s and you can predict that even if the 3 is guilty of some racist thoughts and actions, he could still be considerably more racist, and he himself will not consider himself racist (the racists are the 4s and 5s, obviously).
not nazi --------------------------- nazi
Same applies here - except while for racism you can argue that tons of people find themselves somewhere between 2 and 4, I think with nazism the gray area is significantly smaller, there aren't really any 'well I'm fine with genodicing half a million jews but 5-6 million is too many'-people. Except in the US we saw Trump and Republicans do the opposite. Put simply, they incessantly called basically anyone to the left of Liz Cheney a communist and won the popular vote. Trump didn't go from polling behind Carly Fiorina at 1% to being King president by coddling centrist Clinton supporters.
Propaganda towards your base has some very different criteria for being successful compared to talking to other people who disagree with you. Propaganda towards your base should, for maximum efficiency, combine enthusiasm towards your own cause with anger towards the other group. Whereas if you are talking to someone and you represent one side and they the other, and you want any chance at convincing them that you are in the right, anger is the one emotion you really want to avoid invoking.
Like - being laser focused on Trump putting kids in cages and separating children from their parents as part of a 'he's a fucking racist monster'-package is a great tactic for riling up your own base and getting them out to vote. (To what degree Trump's policy differed from what democrats had done in the past is completely irrelevant to the argument I'm making here, btw.) Telling Trump supporters that they themselves are racists because they wanted to reduce illegal immigration and that's what this looks like under Trump is however a terrible tactic if you are at all interested in having those people not vote Trump next time.
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Norway28674 Posts
On February 21 2025 06:49 KwarK wrote:Or there's this guy. https://www.texasobserver.org/ice-prosecutor-dallas-white-supremacist-x-account/Show nested quote +James “Jim” Joseph Rodden, a 44-year-old who works as an assistant chief counsel for ICE in the Dallas area. Rodden represents the agency in immigration court hearings where judges decide whether an individual is removed from the country. Here's what he posts on twitter. Show nested quote +I’m not a commie, I’m a fascist. Fascists solve communist problems. Get your insults right, retard Show nested quote +Nobody is proposing feeding migrants into tree shredders, yet. Give it a few more weeks at this level of invasion, and that will be the moderate position The idea that nobody really identifies as racist, everyone has biases but everyone in their own mind believes themselves to be a reasonable and open minded person, is a liberal delusion that they've told themselves to excuse inaction when faced with the open return of Nazism. These people know exactly what they are, and they're in government.
Ok like I'm not saying that nobody self-identifies as racist, I'm saying that there are a ton of people that are racist by the standards of a whole lot of other people who don't self-identify as racist. I'm sure that even applies to me - I think cultural appropriation is largely bs for one (not saying it's never distasteful) - but I'd definitely object to the idea that I'm racist because of this.
Like say there's a 0-100 scale of racist, I'm guessing people mostly start self-identifying as it after they're like, 80-90 on that chart. Of course these numbers are arbitrary but I'm guessing you can understand what I mean, even if it's entirely fair if you also disagree. 
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Plus, many just think they are correct and the other people are either lying, or lying to themselves.
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United States42785 Posts
I don’t think you’re a racist. I think an awful lot of people are. And I think non racists giving racists the benefit of the doubt is part of how we got here. It’s commendable to want to see the best in people, make excuses for their bad behaviour, and try to explain away their errors by pointing to external factors like upbringing or cultural context or whatever. Except when it comes to fucking Nazis, then you’re (not you personally Eri) just running PR defence for Nazis.
Seeing the best in people who aren’t like you is great for getting along in a diverse multicultural society where everyone has their place and everyone deserves to coexist. It helps us all get along and see each other as humans rather than tribes. We should definitely use that where possible.
But not for these people. And by the time you have senior government officials openly identifying themselves as fascists it’s too late, you’ve got an infestation. For every one you see because they brag about it on social media there are an awful lot more who aren’t bragging.
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On February 21 2025 07:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2025 23:57 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 20 2025 23:36 Liquid`Drone wrote:On February 20 2025 23:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 20 2025 23:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Call out the blatantly obvious ones but ignore the ones where the plausible deniability is strong. Call out patterns, ignore singular offenses. For Elon Musk it's becoming easier and easier every passing day to call him a nazi and harder and harder to deny it. I'm noticing it with my students - many have stated - looking at the nazi-greeting, that this was just an awkward autist gesturing. These students are overwhelmingly not nazis.
However presenting them with context of other tweets and the totality of musk's dogwhistling, they're like, oh, that's fucked up. It's kinda in line with 'call out the racism that is unquestionably racist, but avoid describing people who are a bit insensitive or ignorant as racist'- thought that I've also been a proponent of. Finding exactly where the balance is is tough of course but my experience is that even among trump supporters, racists and nazis are considered bad people.
So - don't entirely abandon terms and phrases like nazi, fascist and racist, but be careful not to hyperbole - that really pushes people away - and while pushing away the actual nazis isn't something I have much of an issue with, there are tons of people that can get behind some of the dog whistly language without believing in the actual ideology. Does anyone besides white supremacists and the people that "coincidentally" support them get/deserve this sort of political coddling? I mean, sure? I think right wingers describing social democratic policies as communist is counter productive for their cause, too, and that if you saw this happen from moderate right wingers towards moderate left wingers, it'd be likely to push them away more than it'd convince them to join them. + Show Spoiler +Similarly from left to right - if I'm arguing with a voter of the Norwegian conservative party and they're like hey, we need to reduce sick pay to make people less likely to stay home from work when they're not actually sick, then I do a piss-poor job convincing them if I start off by describing their preferred solution as an ayn randian hellscape.
Like picture these scales
communist -------social democrat -------centrist --------conservative/economically liberal------- ayn rand
I think people that are placed on various degrees of this axis can easily end up moving from one of these descriptions to the other. Centrists are potential social democrats and also potential conservatives/economically liberal, social democrats are potential communists but also potential centrists, the conservative/economically liberal can be swayed towards ayn rand or towards centrism - but not towards communism. I further think that if the conserative/economically liberal are conversing with the social democrats and they say 'you guys are communists', the social democrats will be less likely to move towards centrism from that interaction.
not racist ----------------------------- racist
While I don't have fitting terms to describe the potential positions on this scale, I can imagine a similar mechanic unfolding. Say there are 5 points of the not racist to racist scale (like above) - while a 1 (least racist) is less racist than a 3, describing the 3 as a racist does not move the 3 towards the 2 (where he can potentially be swayed), but rather towards the 4. Trying to reach the 5 is a hopeless endeavor, but if you're a 1, you'd rather have more 3s than 4s and you can predict that even if the 3 is guilty of some racist thoughts and actions, he could still be considerably more racist, and he himself will not consider himself racist (the racists are the 4s and 5s, obviously).
not nazi --------------------------- nazi
Same applies here - except while for racism you can argue that tons of people find themselves somewhere between 2 and 4, I think with nazism the gray area is significantly smaller, there aren't really any 'well I'm fine with genodicing half a million jews but 5-6 million is too many'-people. Except in the US we saw Trump and Republicans do the opposite. Put simply, they incessantly called basically anyone to the left of Liz Cheney a communist and won the popular vote. Trump didn't go from polling behind Carly Fiorina at 1% to being King president by coddling centrist Clinton supporters. Propaganda towards your base has some very different criteria for being successful compared to talking to other people who disagree with you. Propaganda towards your base should, for maximum efficiency, combine enthusiasm towards your own cause with anger towards the other group. Whereas if you are talking to someone and you represent one side and they the other, and you want any chance at convincing them that you are in the right, anger is the one emotion you really want to avoid invoking. Like - being laser focused on Trump putting kids in cages and separating children from their parents as part of a 'he's a fucking racist monster'-package is a great tactic for riling up your own base and getting them out to vote. (To what degree Trump's policy differed from what democrats had done in the past is completely irrelevant to the argument I'm making here, btw.) Telling Trump supporters that they themselves are racists because they wanted to reduce illegal immigration and that's what this looks like under Trump is however a terrible tactic if you are at all interested in having those people not vote Trump next time.
Trump went from less than 1% of voters supporting him, to being the only president in history to get more votes each run while running 3+ times. That led to being the only Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years. That seems to me to pretty objectively be about more than just rallying a Republican base that didn't like him. Especially when we remember that basically every other Republican candidate (and their supporters) started as Trump haters and he didn't win them over by coddling them.
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On February 21 2025 07:38 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2025 07:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:On February 20 2025 23:57 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 20 2025 23:36 Liquid`Drone wrote:On February 20 2025 23:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 20 2025 23:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Call out the blatantly obvious ones but ignore the ones where the plausible deniability is strong. Call out patterns, ignore singular offenses. For Elon Musk it's becoming easier and easier every passing day to call him a nazi and harder and harder to deny it. I'm noticing it with my students - many have stated - looking at the nazi-greeting, that this was just an awkward autist gesturing. These students are overwhelmingly not nazis.
However presenting them with context of other tweets and the totality of musk's dogwhistling, they're like, oh, that's fucked up. It's kinda in line with 'call out the racism that is unquestionably racist, but avoid describing people who are a bit insensitive or ignorant as racist'- thought that I've also been a proponent of. Finding exactly where the balance is is tough of course but my experience is that even among trump supporters, racists and nazis are considered bad people.
So - don't entirely abandon terms and phrases like nazi, fascist and racist, but be careful not to hyperbole - that really pushes people away - and while pushing away the actual nazis isn't something I have much of an issue with, there are tons of people that can get behind some of the dog whistly language without believing in the actual ideology. Does anyone besides white supremacists and the people that "coincidentally" support them get/deserve this sort of political coddling? I mean, sure? I think right wingers describing social democratic policies as communist is counter productive for their cause, too, and that if you saw this happen from moderate right wingers towards moderate left wingers, it'd be likely to push them away more than it'd convince them to join them. + Show Spoiler +Similarly from left to right - if I'm arguing with a voter of the Norwegian conservative party and they're like hey, we need to reduce sick pay to make people less likely to stay home from work when they're not actually sick, then I do a piss-poor job convincing them if I start off by describing their preferred solution as an ayn randian hellscape.
Like picture these scales
communist -------social democrat -------centrist --------conservative/economically liberal------- ayn rand
I think people that are placed on various degrees of this axis can easily end up moving from one of these descriptions to the other. Centrists are potential social democrats and also potential conservatives/economically liberal, social democrats are potential communists but also potential centrists, the conservative/economically liberal can be swayed towards ayn rand or towards centrism - but not towards communism. I further think that if the conserative/economically liberal are conversing with the social democrats and they say 'you guys are communists', the social democrats will be less likely to move towards centrism from that interaction.
not racist ----------------------------- racist
While I don't have fitting terms to describe the potential positions on this scale, I can imagine a similar mechanic unfolding. Say there are 5 points of the not racist to racist scale (like above) - while a 1 (least racist) is less racist than a 3, describing the 3 as a racist does not move the 3 towards the 2 (where he can potentially be swayed), but rather towards the 4. Trying to reach the 5 is a hopeless endeavor, but if you're a 1, you'd rather have more 3s than 4s and you can predict that even if the 3 is guilty of some racist thoughts and actions, he could still be considerably more racist, and he himself will not consider himself racist (the racists are the 4s and 5s, obviously).
not nazi --------------------------- nazi
Same applies here - except while for racism you can argue that tons of people find themselves somewhere between 2 and 4, I think with nazism the gray area is significantly smaller, there aren't really any 'well I'm fine with genodicing half a million jews but 5-6 million is too many'-people. Except in the US we saw Trump and Republicans do the opposite. Put simply, they incessantly called basically anyone to the left of Liz Cheney a communist and won the popular vote. Trump didn't go from polling behind Carly Fiorina at 1% to being King president by coddling centrist Clinton supporters. Propaganda towards your base has some very different criteria for being successful compared to talking to other people who disagree with you. Propaganda towards your base should, for maximum efficiency, combine enthusiasm towards your own cause with anger towards the other group. Whereas if you are talking to someone and you represent one side and they the other, and you want any chance at convincing them that you are in the right, anger is the one emotion you really want to avoid invoking. Like - being laser focused on Trump putting kids in cages and separating children from their parents as part of a 'he's a fucking racist monster'-package is a great tactic for riling up your own base and getting them out to vote. (To what degree Trump's policy differed from what democrats had done in the past is completely irrelevant to the argument I'm making here, btw.) Telling Trump supporters that they themselves are racists because they wanted to reduce illegal immigration and that's what this looks like under Trump is however a terrible tactic if you are at all interested in having those people not vote Trump next time. Trump went from less than 1% of voters supporting him, to being the only president in history to get more votes each run while running 3+ times. That led to being the only Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years. That seems to me to pretty objectively be about more than just rallying a Republican base that didn't like him. Especially when we remember that basically every other Republican candidate (and their supporters) started as Trump haters and he didn't win them over by coddling them.
That's not a special metric, nor even particularly impressive. Other presidents could only run twice because they won both their elections, such as how GWB had 50M votes in 2000, and then got wayyy more votes in 2004 (62M), and then had to stop because he couldn't run again lol.
Also, everyone starts at 0% initial support.
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His point is not that he did that, his point is that all the batshit crazy rightwing fascist racist people found someone to latch their insanity on and that that portion of the USA population is more than significant.
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Northern Ireland25483 Posts
On February 21 2025 07:27 KwarK wrote:
I don’t think you’re a racist. I think an awful lot of people are. And I think non racists giving racists the benefit of the doubt is part of how we got here. It’s commendable to want to see the best in people, make excuses for their bad behaviour, and try to explain away their errors by pointing to external factors like upbringing or cultural context or whatever. Except when it comes to fucking Nazis, then you’re (not you personally Eri) just running PR defence for Nazis.
Seeing the best in people who aren’t like you is great for getting along in a diverse multicultural society where everyone has their place and everyone deserves to coexist. It helps us all get along and see each other as humans rather than tribes. We should definitely use that where possible.
But not for these people.
Basically this. Especially the bolded. And yes, absolutely not Drone specifically.
For me a huge vector for this rise has been people running the Fascist’s own PR defence campaign for them, for well over a decade. Hey, I’m not a soothsayer but if vast swathes of the ostensible centre called it like it was, and joined attempts to nip this shit in the bud early, I imagine things are slightly less messy.
Anyway what are most of them fundamentally annoyed about? What actual socio-economic conditions are to blame and how do we address them collectively? What understanding is to be reached and where can sympathy and outreach occur.
And, ultimately it’s that folks don’t like competing on a more even playing field with the coloureds, with the queers, with women. There’s no dancing around that, and there’s no social policy that one can pursue that’s vaguely tolerable to most of us here to actually satiate that anger.
It’s part of why left wing politics struggles to penetrate some of these circles. Some of these folks would rather be on the second rung up in a ladder right jammed in the mud provided they’re above certain other groups, than being on the same one along with them, on a nicer, less rickety ladder that’s resting on good old concrete.
What’s the old adage, to those accustomed to privilege, equality looks like oppression? A phenomenon I’m quite used to over here incidentally as a segment of the Prod/Brit community (my background incidentally) fucking hates the idea.
A gradually diminishing minority I might add, but they’re fighting their good fight while they still have the numbers. The last stand of the myopic white Prods if you will.
Which is what I thought was happening in the US, but rather than the death spasms of a few traditional majority groups struggling to deal with that loss of historic power, it’s persisting, and indeed spreading beyond those groups.
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Northern Ireland25483 Posts
On February 21 2025 07:44 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2025 07:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 21 2025 07:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:On February 20 2025 23:57 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 20 2025 23:36 Liquid`Drone wrote:On February 20 2025 23:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 20 2025 23:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Call out the blatantly obvious ones but ignore the ones where the plausible deniability is strong. Call out patterns, ignore singular offenses. For Elon Musk it's becoming easier and easier every passing day to call him a nazi and harder and harder to deny it. I'm noticing it with my students - many have stated - looking at the nazi-greeting, that this was just an awkward autist gesturing. These students are overwhelmingly not nazis.
However presenting them with context of other tweets and the totality of musk's dogwhistling, they're like, oh, that's fucked up. It's kinda in line with 'call out the racism that is unquestionably racist, but avoid describing people who are a bit insensitive or ignorant as racist'- thought that I've also been a proponent of. Finding exactly where the balance is is tough of course but my experience is that even among trump supporters, racists and nazis are considered bad people.
So - don't entirely abandon terms and phrases like nazi, fascist and racist, but be careful not to hyperbole - that really pushes people away - and while pushing away the actual nazis isn't something I have much of an issue with, there are tons of people that can get behind some of the dog whistly language without believing in the actual ideology. Does anyone besides white supremacists and the people that "coincidentally" support them get/deserve this sort of political coddling? I mean, sure? I think right wingers describing social democratic policies as communist is counter productive for their cause, too, and that if you saw this happen from moderate right wingers towards moderate left wingers, it'd be likely to push them away more than it'd convince them to join them. + Show Spoiler +Similarly from left to right - if I'm arguing with a voter of the Norwegian conservative party and they're like hey, we need to reduce sick pay to make people less likely to stay home from work when they're not actually sick, then I do a piss-poor job convincing them if I start off by describing their preferred solution as an ayn randian hellscape.
Like picture these scales
communist -------social democrat -------centrist --------conservative/economically liberal------- ayn rand
I think people that are placed on various degrees of this axis can easily end up moving from one of these descriptions to the other. Centrists are potential social democrats and also potential conservatives/economically liberal, social democrats are potential communists but also potential centrists, the conservative/economically liberal can be swayed towards ayn rand or towards centrism - but not towards communism. I further think that if the conserative/economically liberal are conversing with the social democrats and they say 'you guys are communists', the social democrats will be less likely to move towards centrism from that interaction.
not racist ----------------------------- racist
While I don't have fitting terms to describe the potential positions on this scale, I can imagine a similar mechanic unfolding. Say there are 5 points of the not racist to racist scale (like above) - while a 1 (least racist) is less racist than a 3, describing the 3 as a racist does not move the 3 towards the 2 (where he can potentially be swayed), but rather towards the 4. Trying to reach the 5 is a hopeless endeavor, but if you're a 1, you'd rather have more 3s than 4s and you can predict that even if the 3 is guilty of some racist thoughts and actions, he could still be considerably more racist, and he himself will not consider himself racist (the racists are the 4s and 5s, obviously).
not nazi --------------------------- nazi
Same applies here - except while for racism you can argue that tons of people find themselves somewhere between 2 and 4, I think with nazism the gray area is significantly smaller, there aren't really any 'well I'm fine with genodicing half a million jews but 5-6 million is too many'-people. Except in the US we saw Trump and Republicans do the opposite. Put simply, they incessantly called basically anyone to the left of Liz Cheney a communist and won the popular vote. Trump didn't go from polling behind Carly Fiorina at 1% to being King president by coddling centrist Clinton supporters. Propaganda towards your base has some very different criteria for being successful compared to talking to other people who disagree with you. Propaganda towards your base should, for maximum efficiency, combine enthusiasm towards your own cause with anger towards the other group. Whereas if you are talking to someone and you represent one side and they the other, and you want any chance at convincing them that you are in the right, anger is the one emotion you really want to avoid invoking. Like - being laser focused on Trump putting kids in cages and separating children from their parents as part of a 'he's a fucking racist monster'-package is a great tactic for riling up your own base and getting them out to vote. (To what degree Trump's policy differed from what democrats had done in the past is completely irrelevant to the argument I'm making here, btw.) Telling Trump supporters that they themselves are racists because they wanted to reduce illegal immigration and that's what this looks like under Trump is however a terrible tactic if you are at all interested in having those people not vote Trump next time. Trump went from less than 1% of voters supporting him, to being the only president in history to get more votes each run while running 3+ times. That led to being the only Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years. That seems to me to pretty objectively be about more than just rallying a Republican base that didn't like him. Especially when we remember that basically every other Republican candidate (and their supporters) started as Trump haters and he didn't win them over by coddling them. That's not a special metric, nor even particularly impressive. Other presidents could only run twice because they won both their elections, such as how GWB had 50M votes in 2000, and then got wayyy more votes in 2004 (62M), and then had to stop because he couldn't run again lol. Also, everyone starts at 0% initial support.
Yeah but Trump has increased his vote over time the more overtly Fascist he’s become.
2016 Trump there were already plenty of warning signs, but you can maybe make a case that it was less mask off, people thought a lot was bluster, other dissatisfaction etc. The MAGA was still there sure, but there was much more of a general disruptor kinda vibe.
Look even then I thought it was horseshit, but I’m being generous, first time for everything.
Next time round he’s running after what he did in his first term, including ‘Stop the steal’ and Jan 6th. Grabs more votes.
Last time he grabs more again, possibly by the pussy, despite his historic record, and despite a much more overtly hard right campaign. Gone are the types enthused by Bernie Sanders who think Trump still might be preferable to a Clinton type because he dangles a few plausible deniability carrots their way, that kind of stuff has long been dropped/seen right through.
But I think in pointing this trend out GH is augmenting other arguments more than his own. I find it better (crude) evidence that the US’ populace is getting more fascist, or is more tolerant of it than anything else. And if it’s trending in that direction then other political movements breaking through gets less and less likely over time.
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On February 21 2025 07:46 Uldridge wrote:
His point is not that he did that, his point is that all the batshit crazy rightwing fascist racist people found someone to latch their insanity on and that that portion of the USA population is more than significant.
Beyond that, they grew their ranks to a popular vote win by tapping into "you're either with us or against us" and betting on people choosing fascism over "communism/socialism".
They didn't use this suggested method of coddling the center left and center right. They gave them an ultimatum; "do you want to be with US*gesturing at white supremacists, fascists, batshits, etc* or the communist/socialist witches! *gesturing at Liz Cheney, Nancy Pelosi, and AOC as the example of communists*".
It's not a coincidence that something so obviously absurd worked. It's also not genetic or unchangeable. It is a direct and obvious consequence of decades of willful manipulation of public opinion through massive anti-socialist/communist propaganda campaigns, coups, assassinations, wars, etc.
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Northern Ireland25483 Posts
On February 21 2025 07:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2025 23:57 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 20 2025 23:36 Liquid`Drone wrote:On February 20 2025 23:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 20 2025 23:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Call out the blatantly obvious ones but ignore the ones where the plausible deniability is strong. Call out patterns, ignore singular offenses. For Elon Musk it's becoming easier and easier every passing day to call him a nazi and harder and harder to deny it. I'm noticing it with my students - many have stated - looking at the nazi-greeting, that this was just an awkward autist gesturing. These students are overwhelmingly not nazis.
However presenting them with context of other tweets and the totality of musk's dogwhistling, they're like, oh, that's fucked up. It's kinda in line with 'call out the racism that is unquestionably racist, but avoid describing people who are a bit insensitive or ignorant as racist'- thought that I've also been a proponent of. Finding exactly where the balance is is tough of course but my experience is that even among trump supporters, racists and nazis are considered bad people.
So - don't entirely abandon terms and phrases like nazi, fascist and racist, but be careful not to hyperbole - that really pushes people away - and while pushing away the actual nazis isn't something I have much of an issue with, there are tons of people that can get behind some of the dog whistly language without believing in the actual ideology. Does anyone besides white supremacists and the people that "coincidentally" support them get/deserve this sort of political coddling? I mean, sure? I think right wingers describing social democratic policies as communist is counter productive for their cause, too, and that if you saw this happen from moderate right wingers towards moderate left wingers, it'd be likely to push them away more than it'd convince them to join them. + Show Spoiler +Similarly from left to right - if I'm arguing with a voter of the Norwegian conservative party and they're like hey, we need to reduce sick pay to make people less likely to stay home from work when they're not actually sick, then I do a piss-poor job convincing them if I start off by describing their preferred solution as an ayn randian hellscape.
Like picture these scales
communist -------social democrat -------centrist --------conservative/economically liberal------- ayn rand
I think people that are placed on various degrees of this axis can easily end up moving from one of these descriptions to the other. Centrists are potential social democrats and also potential conservatives/economically liberal, social democrats are potential communists but also potential centrists, the conservative/economically liberal can be swayed towards ayn rand or towards centrism - but not towards communism. I further think that if the conserative/economically liberal are conversing with the social democrats and they say 'you guys are communists', the social democrats will be less likely to move towards centrism from that interaction.
not racist ----------------------------- racist
While I don't have fitting terms to describe the potential positions on this scale, I can imagine a similar mechanic unfolding. Say there are 5 points of the not racist to racist scale (like above) - while a 1 (least racist) is less racist than a 3, describing the 3 as a racist does not move the 3 towards the 2 (where he can potentially be swayed), but rather towards the 4. Trying to reach the 5 is a hopeless endeavor, but if you're a 1, you'd rather have more 3s than 4s and you can predict that even if the 3 is guilty of some racist thoughts and actions, he could still be considerably more racist, and he himself will not consider himself racist (the racists are the 4s and 5s, obviously).
not nazi --------------------------- nazi
Same applies here - except while for racism you can argue that tons of people find themselves somewhere between 2 and 4, I think with nazism the gray area is significantly smaller, there aren't really any 'well I'm fine with genodicing half a million jews but 5-6 million is too many'-people. Except in the US we saw Trump and Republicans do the opposite. Put simply, they incessantly called basically anyone to the left of Liz Cheney a communist and won the popular vote. Trump didn't go from polling behind Carly Fiorina at 1% to being King president by coddling centrist Clinton supporters. Propaganda towards your base has some very different criteria for being successful compared to talking to other people who disagree with you. Propaganda towards your base should, for maximum efficiency, combine enthusiasm towards your own cause with anger towards the other group. Whereas if you are talking to someone and you represent one side and they the other, and you want any chance at convincing them that you are in the right, anger is the one emotion you really want to avoid invoking. Like - being laser focused on Trump putting kids in cages and separating children from their parents as part of a 'he's a fucking racist monster'-package is a great tactic for riling up your own base and getting them out to vote. (To what degree Trump's policy differed from what democrats had done in the past is completely irrelevant to the argument I'm making here, btw.) Telling Trump supporters that they themselves are racists because they wanted to reduce illegal immigration and that's what this looks like under Trump is however a terrible tactic if you are at all interested in having those people not vote Trump next time.
What is the correct tactic? Is there one?
I think you may reach some with a ‘Look you have reasonable concerns about illegal migration, but is this how you want to deal with it?’ on some human level.
A huge chunk don’t care about such concerns, or much of anything other than punishing those illegal migrants.
Case in point the UK’s bright idea under the Tories to just repatriate people to fucking Rwanda of all places. Notwithstanding the obvious human impact, it also cost more to do that. Or to try to fuck a load of English speaking refugees who ended up in the UK fleeing from various conflicts to France. Where, quel surprise they don’t speak French. Sweet, great idea.
Where the right wing press would bitch incessantly about migrants in 5 star hotels. One, they weren’t. In the same buildings perhaps but not living a 5 star life. Two, they were left to just sit there, including many, many people who were desperate to work and put something back in a place that gave them sanctuary, because they were left unprocessed and in limbo, in some cases for years.
People don’t like to be confronted with what their advocacy actually looks like when it’s enacted in real terms. I’m not sure that means others shouldn’t point it out.
Feels we’re in a million mini-Iraqs these days. It took a while but eventually ‘fuck off you unpatriotic Commies’ eventually did swing round to a ‘why the fuck are we doing this again?’ Maybe this means people will come around, I’m somewhat doubtful.
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On February 21 2025 08:12 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2025 07:44 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On February 21 2025 07:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 21 2025 07:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:On February 20 2025 23:57 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 20 2025 23:36 Liquid`Drone wrote:On February 20 2025 23:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 20 2025 23:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Call out the blatantly obvious ones but ignore the ones where the plausible deniability is strong. Call out patterns, ignore singular offenses. For Elon Musk it's becoming easier and easier every passing day to call him a nazi and harder and harder to deny it. I'm noticing it with my students - many have stated - looking at the nazi-greeting, that this was just an awkward autist gesturing. These students are overwhelmingly not nazis.
However presenting them with context of other tweets and the totality of musk's dogwhistling, they're like, oh, that's fucked up. It's kinda in line with 'call out the racism that is unquestionably racist, but avoid describing people who are a bit insensitive or ignorant as racist'- thought that I've also been a proponent of. Finding exactly where the balance is is tough of course but my experience is that even among trump supporters, racists and nazis are considered bad people.
So - don't entirely abandon terms and phrases like nazi, fascist and racist, but be careful not to hyperbole - that really pushes people away - and while pushing away the actual nazis isn't something I have much of an issue with, there are tons of people that can get behind some of the dog whistly language without believing in the actual ideology. Does anyone besides white supremacists and the people that "coincidentally" support them get/deserve this sort of political coddling? I mean, sure? I think right wingers describing social democratic policies as communist is counter productive for their cause, too, and that if you saw this happen from moderate right wingers towards moderate left wingers, it'd be likely to push them away more than it'd convince them to join them. + Show Spoiler +Similarly from left to right - if I'm arguing with a voter of the Norwegian conservative party and they're like hey, we need to reduce sick pay to make people less likely to stay home from work when they're not actually sick, then I do a piss-poor job convincing them if I start off by describing their preferred solution as an ayn randian hellscape.
Like picture these scales
communist -------social democrat -------centrist --------conservative/economically liberal------- ayn rand
I think people that are placed on various degrees of this axis can easily end up moving from one of these descriptions to the other. Centrists are potential social democrats and also potential conservatives/economically liberal, social democrats are potential communists but also potential centrists, the conservative/economically liberal can be swayed towards ayn rand or towards centrism - but not towards communism. I further think that if the conserative/economically liberal are conversing with the social democrats and they say 'you guys are communists', the social democrats will be less likely to move towards centrism from that interaction.
not racist ----------------------------- racist
While I don't have fitting terms to describe the potential positions on this scale, I can imagine a similar mechanic unfolding. Say there are 5 points of the not racist to racist scale (like above) - while a 1 (least racist) is less racist than a 3, describing the 3 as a racist does not move the 3 towards the 2 (where he can potentially be swayed), but rather towards the 4. Trying to reach the 5 is a hopeless endeavor, but if you're a 1, you'd rather have more 3s than 4s and you can predict that even if the 3 is guilty of some racist thoughts and actions, he could still be considerably more racist, and he himself will not consider himself racist (the racists are the 4s and 5s, obviously).
not nazi --------------------------- nazi
Same applies here - except while for racism you can argue that tons of people find themselves somewhere between 2 and 4, I think with nazism the gray area is significantly smaller, there aren't really any 'well I'm fine with genodicing half a million jews but 5-6 million is too many'-people. Except in the US we saw Trump and Republicans do the opposite. Put simply, they incessantly called basically anyone to the left of Liz Cheney a communist and won the popular vote. Trump didn't go from polling behind Carly Fiorina at 1% to being King president by coddling centrist Clinton supporters. Propaganda towards your base has some very different criteria for being successful compared to talking to other people who disagree with you. Propaganda towards your base should, for maximum efficiency, combine enthusiasm towards your own cause with anger towards the other group. Whereas if you are talking to someone and you represent one side and they the other, and you want any chance at convincing them that you are in the right, anger is the one emotion you really want to avoid invoking. Like - being laser focused on Trump putting kids in cages and separating children from their parents as part of a 'he's a fucking racist monster'-package is a great tactic for riling up your own base and getting them out to vote. (To what degree Trump's policy differed from what democrats had done in the past is completely irrelevant to the argument I'm making here, btw.) Telling Trump supporters that they themselves are racists because they wanted to reduce illegal immigration and that's what this looks like under Trump is however a terrible tactic if you are at all interested in having those people not vote Trump next time. Trump went from less than 1% of voters supporting him, to being the only president in history to get more votes each run while running 3+ times. That led to being the only Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years. That seems to me to pretty objectively be about more than just rallying a Republican base that didn't like him. Especially when we remember that basically every other Republican candidate (and their supporters) started as Trump haters and he didn't win them over by coddling them. That's not a special metric, nor even particularly impressive. Other presidents could only run twice because they won both their elections, such as how GWB had 50M votes in 2000, and then got wayyy more votes in 2004 (62M), and then had to stop because he couldn't run again lol. Also, everyone starts at 0% initial support. Yeah but Trump has increased his vote over time the more overtly Fascist he’s become. 2016 Trump there were already plenty of warning signs, but you can maybe make a case that it was less mask off, people thought a lot was bluster, other dissatisfaction etc. The MAGA was still there sure, but there was much more of a general disruptor kinda vibe. Look even then I thought it was horseshit, but I’m being generous, first time for everything. Next time round he’s running after what he did in his first term, including ‘Stop the steal’ and Jan 6th. Grabs more votes. Last time he grabs more again, possibly by the pussy, despite his historic record, and despite a much more overtly hard right campaign. Gone are the types enthused by Bernie Sanders who think Trump still might be preferable to a Clinton type because he dangles a few plausible deniability carrots their way, that kind of stuff has long been dropped/seen right through. But I think in pointing this trend out GH is augmenting other arguments more than his own. I find it better (crude) evidence that the US’ populace is getting more fascist, or is more tolerant of it than anything else. And if it’s trending in that direction then other political movements breaking through gets less and less likely over time.
I think I might be with Kwark here (and pretty sure GH is as well): if you're hoping elections are going solve this, you've been smoking too much weed. I'm a bit more hopeful than Kwark, because I don't think we're in 1934 yet. More like 1932. And plenty can still go wrong for Trump and his fledgling fascist takeover. But people have to actually mobilize and do something to stop it.
There is some tiny hope on that front too: at the rate they're dismantling the US government, the effects should be pretty obvious to everybody pretty soon. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/20/trump-federal-worker-firings-impact
Between sucking up to Russia, stopping meemaw from receiving welfare, allowing toxic waste dumps to poison drinking water, slashing funding to air safety, etc. it'll be a grab bag of terrible ideas which everyone should be able to find something in that is objectively made much worse by Trump. Perhaps that'll motivate people to some form of activism.
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Northern Ireland25483 Posts
On February 21 2025 08:24 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2025 07:46 Uldridge wrote:
His point is not that he did that, his point is that all the batshit crazy rightwing fascist racist people found someone to latch their insanity on and that that portion of the USA population is more than significant. Beyond that, they grew their ranks to a popular vote win by tapping into "you're either with us or against us" and betting on people choosing fascism over "communism/socialism". They didn't use this suggested method of coddling the center left and center right. They gave them an ultimatum; "do you want to be with US*gesturing at white supremacists, fascists, batshits, etc* or the communist/socialist witches! *gesturing at Liz Cheney, Nancy Pelosi, and AOC as the example of communists*". It's not a coincidence that something so obviously absurd worked. It's also not genetic or unchangeable. It is a direct and obvious consequence of decades of willful manipulation of public opinion through massive anti-socialist/communist propaganda campaigns, coups, assassinations, wars, etc.
Yeah, agreed there.
Equally if the ground is that poisoned already, how is pushing left going to work as a strategy? At least in any short term consideration.
You seem to simultaneously be correctly identifying the lay of the land, and proscribing solutions I broadly agree with in the medium thru long term, but mashing them together in a configuration that just doesn’t work in the short.
That ultimatum of which you speak is effective, but it’s only effective if people fucking hate the mere spectre of anything approaching socialism. And if that’s the case, expecting socialism to be the solution in any reasonable timeframe seems, unrealistic.
Which, if we take your own framework into account, it seems you’re already aware of.
Which seems a problematic circle to square to me. Push for socialism, but Jesus keep Trump out seems a better roll of the dice than to give him and his cronies the keys to the kingdom for a term.
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On February 21 2025 08:12 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2025 07:44 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On February 21 2025 07:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 21 2025 07:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:On February 20 2025 23:57 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 20 2025 23:36 Liquid`Drone wrote:On February 20 2025 23:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 20 2025 23:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Call out the blatantly obvious ones but ignore the ones where the plausible deniability is strong. Call out patterns, ignore singular offenses. For Elon Musk it's becoming easier and easier every passing day to call him a nazi and harder and harder to deny it. I'm noticing it with my students - many have stated - looking at the nazi-greeting, that this was just an awkward autist gesturing. These students are overwhelmingly not nazis.
However presenting them with context of other tweets and the totality of musk's dogwhistling, they're like, oh, that's fucked up. It's kinda in line with 'call out the racism that is unquestionably racist, but avoid describing people who are a bit insensitive or ignorant as racist'- thought that I've also been a proponent of. Finding exactly where the balance is is tough of course but my experience is that even among trump supporters, racists and nazis are considered bad people.
So - don't entirely abandon terms and phrases like nazi, fascist and racist, but be careful not to hyperbole - that really pushes people away - and while pushing away the actual nazis isn't something I have much of an issue with, there are tons of people that can get behind some of the dog whistly language without believing in the actual ideology. Does anyone besides white supremacists and the people that "coincidentally" support them get/deserve this sort of political coddling? I mean, sure? I think right wingers describing social democratic policies as communist is counter productive for their cause, too, and that if you saw this happen from moderate right wingers towards moderate left wingers, it'd be likely to push them away more than it'd convince them to join them. + Show Spoiler +Similarly from left to right - if I'm arguing with a voter of the Norwegian conservative party and they're like hey, we need to reduce sick pay to make people less likely to stay home from work when they're not actually sick, then I do a piss-poor job convincing them if I start off by describing their preferred solution as an ayn randian hellscape.
Like picture these scales
communist -------social democrat -------centrist --------conservative/economically liberal------- ayn rand
I think people that are placed on various degrees of this axis can easily end up moving from one of these descriptions to the other. Centrists are potential social democrats and also potential conservatives/economically liberal, social democrats are potential communists but also potential centrists, the conservative/economically liberal can be swayed towards ayn rand or towards centrism - but not towards communism. I further think that if the conserative/economically liberal are conversing with the social democrats and they say 'you guys are communists', the social democrats will be less likely to move towards centrism from that interaction.
not racist ----------------------------- racist
While I don't have fitting terms to describe the potential positions on this scale, I can imagine a similar mechanic unfolding. Say there are 5 points of the not racist to racist scale (like above) - while a 1 (least racist) is less racist than a 3, describing the 3 as a racist does not move the 3 towards the 2 (where he can potentially be swayed), but rather towards the 4. Trying to reach the 5 is a hopeless endeavor, but if you're a 1, you'd rather have more 3s than 4s and you can predict that even if the 3 is guilty of some racist thoughts and actions, he could still be considerably more racist, and he himself will not consider himself racist (the racists are the 4s and 5s, obviously).
not nazi --------------------------- nazi
Same applies here - except while for racism you can argue that tons of people find themselves somewhere between 2 and 4, I think with nazism the gray area is significantly smaller, there aren't really any 'well I'm fine with genodicing half a million jews but 5-6 million is too many'-people. Except in the US we saw Trump and Republicans do the opposite. Put simply, they incessantly called basically anyone to the left of Liz Cheney a communist and won the popular vote. Trump didn't go from polling behind Carly Fiorina at 1% to being King president by coddling centrist Clinton supporters. Propaganda towards your base has some very different criteria for being successful compared to talking to other people who disagree with you. Propaganda towards your base should, for maximum efficiency, combine enthusiasm towards your own cause with anger towards the other group. Whereas if you are talking to someone and you represent one side and they the other, and you want any chance at convincing them that you are in the right, anger is the one emotion you really want to avoid invoking. Like - being laser focused on Trump putting kids in cages and separating children from their parents as part of a 'he's a fucking racist monster'-package is a great tactic for riling up your own base and getting them out to vote. (To what degree Trump's policy differed from what democrats had done in the past is completely irrelevant to the argument I'm making here, btw.) Telling Trump supporters that they themselves are racists because they wanted to reduce illegal immigration and that's what this looks like under Trump is however a terrible tactic if you are at all interested in having those people not vote Trump next time. Trump went from less than 1% of voters supporting him, to being the only president in history to get more votes each run while running 3+ times. That led to being the only Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years. That seems to me to pretty objectively be about more than just rallying a Republican base that didn't like him. Especially when we remember that basically every other Republican candidate (and their supporters) started as Trump haters and he didn't win them over by coddling them. That's not a special metric, nor even particularly impressive. Other presidents could only run twice because they won both their elections, such as how GWB had 50M votes in 2000, and then got wayyy more votes in 2004 (62M), and then had to stop because he couldn't run again lol. Also, everyone starts at 0% initial support. Yeah but Trump has increased his vote over time the more overtly Fascist he’s become. 2016 Trump there were already plenty of warning signs, but you can maybe make a case that it was less mask off, people thought a lot was bluster, other dissatisfaction etc. The MAGA was still there sure, but there was much more of a general disruptor kinda vibe. Look even then I thought it was horseshit, but I’m being generous, first time for everything. Next time round he’s running after what he did in his first term, including ‘Stop the steal’ and Jan 6th. Grabs more votes. Last time he grabs more again, possibly by the pussy, despite his historic record, and despite a much more overtly hard right campaign. Gone are the types enthused by Bernie Sanders who think Trump still might be preferable to a Clinton type because he dangles a few plausible deniability carrots their way, that kind of stuff has long been dropped/seen right through. But I think in pointing this trend out GH is augmenting other arguments more than his own. I find it better (crude) evidence that the US’ populace is getting more fascist, or is more tolerant of it than anything else. And if it’s trending in that direction then other political movements breaking through gets less and less likely over time.
I think that's a fair inference, at least for Republicans, and it's fucking scary. It's also consistent with the Republican philosophy of playing dirty and doing whatever it takes to win, as opposed to Democrats who have better ideas but are too passive and too chicken to get things done (which, in this case, means being okay with rigging elections, committing fraud and felonies, and installing yes-men to complete a hostile takeover of the government).
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